How to Lament, Part 4
The Phrygian Fringe
In the last post, we looked at the lyrical legacy of laments. In this one, we'll look at the musical legacy.
The Phrygian Fringe
Picture the vast territory that stretches from Spain/North Africa to Eastern Europe and onto Persia. Roughly equivalent to the land touched by the Islamic empires, and though which Islamic and pre-Islamic musical practices were spread to the vast hinterlands of medieval civilization. Among those practices was a curious leftover from the Neolithic: the lament.1
Iberia
There is a big gap in mentions between the Talmudic period and 14th century, but the wailing women did return, this time in Spain (Iberia).
Jewish and Moslem women were engaged as professional wailers by Christians as well as their own co-religionists… it was customary for Spanish Jews to have women wailers at their funerals. Sautter citing Baer, History of the Jews
Why did Christians hire non-Christians for this task? Remember the song in the last post, "Death is Awful" by Vera Hall? You'll remember it was considered strangely dour, and when the religious Ralph Stanley re-did it, he left out the "is awful" part. Christians, for obvious reasons, think death is a bummer, but not that much of a bummer, since what comes after it is supposed to be pretty cool.
Likewise, medieval Christians prohibited their own from lamenting.2 Those prohibitions paint a picture of raucous funerals, including music, indecent "ring dances," gambling and "devilish songs." The solution was to slowly teach believers to be sober spectator/consumers of the death rituals- maybe sing some nice hymns in a collective text-based fashion- and then let the professional male priests take care of the rest.
Spanish Jewish Wailing Women
What did wailing look like in medieval Iberia? There simply isn't enough information to know. The best we can do is (1) cobble together info from prohibitions and (2) extrapolate from other communities, including North African and Yemenite wailing traditions. Neither of this is sound practice, so be warned.
If we are willing to proceed, we find elements of wailing seem to include: clapping (and maybe castanets or drums?), stamping of feet, gestures (outstretched arms), the wailing itself, and a slow circling of the funeral bier.
This image from early 14th century Castille is a rare depiction of mourning from that time. First we notice the presence of women “making the symbolic gestures of grief… such mourners also clapped their hands to punctuate the lamentations." (Metzger)
Gamliel’s study of Israeli Yemenite Jewish wailing doesn’t include foot stamping, but does include arm gestures, which are vital. Gamliel also notes a “less is more” aesthetic amongst her contemporary informants where holding back amplifies the emotional tension.
The wailers’ bodily movements and breathing take place in accordance with a dramaturgical rule: The less there is, the more there is. Her head arms and upper body are allowed to make small moves. The wailer could stand up, make herself fall, wave her arms energetically, or bend over fully. Instead, she limits her movements. By so doing, she protects her own special power as an expert… [Gamliel, Aesthetics of Sorrow]
See also the section on Restraint in my post on klezmer phrasing. Manual Alvar, apparently, contradicts this in his book on Moroccan Jews, with discussion of strong, exaggerated movements” that he thinks were “important in Spain and disappeared.”3 Goluboff, in their study of Caucasian Mountain Jews just mentions “movements.”
All of the studies also made a special note that wailers were older women who had been “down the line” a bit. This is not Britney Spears territory. More on this soon.
Most of the information and extrapolation about this culture comes from Cia Sautter’s The Miriam Tradition. She deserves credit for unearthing this research and organizing it, but she definitely is trying to build a historical tradition, and connect it to dance and normative Judaism. I can appreciate these attempts, but the connection with normative Judaism seems strained. To me, this is an independent parallel tradition, one that existed before Judaism and has a complicated living interrelationship with it.
Well, in these short paragraphs, I’ve tried to list the highlights of a millennium of non-Ashkenazic Jewish keening practices, stretching over a huge distance. It’s obviously absurdly short. My excuse is we just don’t have that much. But, scant as it is, I think it gives us what we need to go on and see how the lament evolved into other cultural forms during this time.
From Ritual to Music
Readers familiar with Spanish music might see where this is going. All of those lamenting attributes, each one in fact, happen to be important aspects of the many different styles of music that would come to be known as flamenco.
Does this mean flamenco is Jewish? No. And we need to be very precise about this as this is the subject of much controversy.
First of all, flamenco comes much much later in Spanish history.
It is also agreed that flamenco acquired its present-day style around the end of the 18th century, but only developed into the coalesced art form known as flamenco around the middle of the 19th century. This process took place during the period of the "Café Cantantes" (lit. “Singing Cafes”), venues that hosted variety shows, including flamenco. Ronen
Keep in mind that Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. However, it is also true that there were Jews who stayed in Spain after 1492, and some of them lived with other persecuted groups, such as Muslims and recently-arrived Gitanos in Southern Spain. This seems to be what happened in the Zomian4caves of Sacromonte.5
And also, even though flamenco doesn’t arrive until much later, it is possible this cultural powder-keg could have influenced earlier forms that then led to flamenco.
Secondly, efforts to connect Jewish music to flamenco flounder on the fact that no one knows what Jewish music in medieval Spain sounded like or if it had unique attributes at all. Judith Cohen said, about Judeo-Spanish music, “We have little idea how the songs actually sounded before this century.” There is the argument that there was nothing unique about it at all:
The melodies of the Sephardic song are usually borrowed from or influenced by the music of the surrounding cultures where the Sephardic Jews lived. Ronen
This accusation is a bit unfair since, As Cohen points out, no one really knows what Sephardic song was at this time and Ronen’s conjecture seems to be based on folklore conducted centuries later.
In the end, even though some of the pro-Jewish-flamenco connection folks point to various specific Jewish songs, lyrics or mention of Jews in lyrics as evidence, it is possible that they are overlooking the obvious: perhaps it is not Jewish music which was an influence, but Jewish lament, which shares so many similar characteristics and even helps explain some of the connections between the music and dance. As far as I can tell, only one person makes this point, Cia Sautter:
However, the connections [Jimenez] makes between Jewish music and flamenco, plus historical accounts of death, lament and dance in Spain, imply that the fundamental movements of the endechas influenced flamenco dancing.
In short, it is the lament, kept alive by non-Christians (Jews, Muslims, Gitanos) in the medieval period, and not the music, that is the missing link.6 Just as the lament was an important ingredient in the Greek amanes, which then became an important influence on rebetika; the Iberian lament, kept alive in a crucial period by Jewish women, was perhaps an early and essential ingredient in the musical genres that followed in Spain.
The earliest forms were the canas, polos, and saetas. All of these songs express pain, loss and lament... out of these "deep songs" the cante soleares evolved. Sautter
From the Phrygian Fringe to The Atlantean
We see the same connection between lament, ornamented singing and a connection to the “Old High Culture” of the Near East in, of all places, Ireland. This post is a examination of the lament’s impact on klezmer, so this excursion is simply meant as a test case, to better allow us to see “our own” tradition.
As opposed to other Irish singing traditions, sean-nós singing is a style of melismatic and highly ornamented solo singing. It covers many genres, including the lament. As we’ve seen with klezmer, it belongs to a tradition that is meant to express personal emotions. At the same time, it too values restraint.
There are no dramatic high notes, no hushed tones, no build-up to a pyrotechnical climax; instead the singer will concentrate on minuscule decoration. Quinn
The recording below is an Irish lament, but the connection between this and sean-nós should seem quite obvious.
Sean-nós means “The old way” or “the old style” and there is a definite understanding that this style is distinct from other singing and musical traditions in Ireland.
Sean-nós songs are set apart from other songs by their sound. Most comic, bawdy, drinking and dancing songs are sung at a strict meter and tempo. A sean-nós song is sung much more slowly, because the words are believed to matter so much more. (Williams)7
The connection to the Near East might seem outlandish, but allow Alan Lomax to explain:
[I] have long considered Ireland to be part of the Old Southern Mediterranean-Middle Eastern family of style that I call bardic – highly ornamented, free-rhythmed, solo, or solo and string accompanied singing that support sophisticated and elaborate forms.’
And here’s Peter Van Der Merwe riffing on Lomax’s notion of the Old High Culture of the Near East.8
Some Irish performances, both vocal and instrumental, are so Oriental in character that they could easily be mistaken for something out of the Balkans or the Near East. The exact provenance of this style is impossible to determine, but the likeliest explanation is that it is simply a survival of the Arab-influenced music that spread over Europe during the Middle Ages.
The reason for this excursion to Ireland is to remind us that these different attributes- the lament, ornamentation, the Old High Culture of the Near East, notions of restraint, stomping (compare sean-nós dance to flamenco stepping), questions of musical caste, attitiudes towards improvisation, personal feeling- are all part of a coherent cultural whole. Of course, throughout history, musicians weren’t required to be completely conscious of these traditions to use them, nor are they ever completely stable- they are alive- but, of course, that’s the point.
In our current state of rupture and cultural noise, appreciating the fullness of this ancient culture as it morphs into modern musical traditions allows us to amplify meaning in the connections between dance, music, gesture, lament, worldviews, etc. This let’s us inhabit the tradition, so that we can let it breathe, as opposed to reifying it into rigid, disconnected parts.
Next: Lamenting in Ashkenaz
The term is borrowed from Peter Van Der Merwe’s Roots of the Classical: The Popular Origins of Western Music, who coined the term to refer that zone of interaction between “East” and “West” where the Phrygian mode prevails. Psychic Courtyardists’ saw it earlier, though unnamed, in my discussion of nonsense singing in flameno vs. niggunim. To some extent, we all now live in the Phrygian Fringe.
The endechas encouraged grieving and performed what might be construed as a pagan activity. Alvar considers their practice to be pagan. He notes that rabbinic literature contains opposition to the mourning women. But he also claims that lament was more acceptable for Judaism than for Chirstianity, which stressed a happy afterlife and resurrection.
See also:
from Music & Worship in Pagan & Christian Antiquity by Quasten, Johannes, 1900-1987
“St. Paul argued against them. St John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople at the end of the 4th century, railed against using "hired women... as mourners to make the mourning more intense, to fan the fires of grief,"
It is possible to see in some art forms, like flamenco or klezmer, both restraint and exaggeration, but c’mon…
From Pohren Art of Flamenco. Also re: fugitive: “Then there were the brave women who sought to come to terms with their loss by embracing it, setting it to music and consoling an entire generation. These were the women of Rebetika, the derbederisses, a Greek term that has come to denote liberated women but which is ultimately derived from a Turkish word for fugitive.” Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots, Goldberg
It’s a stretch but just for fun: Florence Whyte, in the Dance of Death in Spain and Catalonia, says “Endechas, or lamentation, formed a part of the repertoire of the medieval jugular in Spain.” Trimberg, Germany is a long way from Spain, but perhaps this connection to the medieval jongleur might finally explain why recurring Psychic Courtyardism character Susskind of Trimberg’s lyrics were considered “serious and gloomy” when compared to his gentile counterparts. We tend to see this as a cliche of diasporic Jewish melancholy, but doing so misses something very important. Remember that Jews, unlike their Christian counterparts, were free to say “Death sucks.” They didn’t need to dress it up. This is often seen as morbid but it is quite the opposite- its an affirmation of life and the preciousness of this world, not the next. It’s an expression of l’chaim.
Like a vocal doina, the rhythmically-flowing sean-nós also relies heavily on improvised, personal ornamentation that can’t be reduced to a formula and relies heavily on phrasing. Reading Williams’ article on the sean-nós with klezmer in mind will bring up fascinating parallels in ornament, phrasing and even notions of musical class and cultural rupture.
Van Der Merwe and Lomax, to put it simply, believe in diffusion instead of polygenesis (the same thing popping up in different places). There is no answer to this eternal argument, at least not yet. VDM and Lomax do have to face the challenge that there isn’t exactly a ton of material evidence to support their cultural connections, but as is so often the case, there seems to be just enough to leave the case open.